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123 lines
4.2 KiB
Plaintext
123 lines
4.2 KiB
Plaintext
This text is for people who know Delphi; it describes differences with Delphi.
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The online document is more up to date:
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http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Lazarus_Documentation#Coming_from_Delphi
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Delphi -> Lazarus
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=================
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Lazarus is an Rapid Application Development (RAD) tool like Delphi. That means
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it comes with a visual component library and an IDE. The Lazarus component
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library (LCL) is very similar to Delphi's VCL. Most units, classes and
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properties have the same name and functionality. This makes porting easy. But
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Lazarus is *not* an 'open source Delphi clone'. So don't expect 100%
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compatibility.
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The biggest differences:
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Lazarus is completely open source, is written platform independent and uses the
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mighty FreePascal compiler (FPC). FPC runs on more than 15 platforms. However,
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not all packages and libs are ported, so Lazarus currently runs on Linux,
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Free/Open/NetBSD and win32.
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Lazarus is not complete, as is this text. We are always searching for new
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developers, packagers, porters, documentation writers, ... .
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Delphi IDE -> Lazarus IDE
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=========================
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Projects
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- The main file of a Delphi application is the .dpr file. The main file of a
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Lazarus project is the .lpi file (Lazarus Project Information). A .dpr file
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is the program main source. A Lazarus application also has a .lpr file, which
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is also the main source file. But the .lpr file is nothing more.
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The important file is the .lpi file.
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- There is always a project. The only way to "close" a project is to exit
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lazarus or open another project. This is because a lazarus project is also a
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"session".
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This means, the current editor settings are also stored in the .lpi file and
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are restored when you reopen the project.
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For example: You are debugging an application, set a lot of breakpoints and
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bookmarks. You can save the project at any time, close lazarus or open
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another project. When you reopen the project, even on another computer, all
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your breakpoints, bookmarks, open files, cursor positions, jump history, ...
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are restored.
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Source Editor
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- Nearly all keys and short cuts can be defined in
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environment->editor options->key mappings
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- The source editor works with comments. For Delphi comments are just space
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between code. No code feature works there and when new code is auto inserted,
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your comments will travel. Under Lazarus you can do a find declaration even
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on code in comments. Although this is not completely reliable, it often works.
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And when new code is inserted, the IDE uses some heuristics to keep comment
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and code together. For example: It will not split the line
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"c: char; // comment".
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- Delphi's "Code Completion" (Ctrl+Space) is called "Identifier Completion"
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under Lazarus. The Lazarus term "Code Completion" is a feature, combining
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"Automatic Class Completion" (same as under Delphi),
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"Local Variable Completion" and "Event Assignment Completion". All of them
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are invoked by Ctrl+Shift+C and the IDE determines by the cursor position,
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what is ment.
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Example for Local Variable Completion:
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Assume you just created a new method and wrote the statement "i:=3;":
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procedure TForm1.DoSomething;
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begin
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i:=3;
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end;
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Position the cursor over the identifier "i" and press Ctrl+Shift+C to get
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procedure TForm1.DoSomething;
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var
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i: Integer;
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begin
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i:=3;
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end;
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Example for Event Assignment Completion. A nice feature of the object
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inspector is to auto create methods. The same you can get in the source
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editor. For example:
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Button1.OnClick:=
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Position the cursor behind the assign operator ":=" and press Ctrl+Shift+C.
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- "Word Completion" Ctrl+W. It works similar to the "Identifier Completion",
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but it does not work on pascal identifiers, but on all words. It lets you
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choose of all words in all open files beginning with the same letters.
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- Supports Include files. Delphi didn't support it, and so you probably didn't
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create many include files. But include files have a big advantage:
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They make it possible writing patform (in)dependent code without messing your
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code with IFDEFs.
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For example: Method jumping, Class Completion, find declaration, .. all
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work with include files.
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Designer
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- Guidelines
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Packages
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- see Packages.txt
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VCL -> LCL
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==========
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